Boost Mobile is one of the many ways you can get on the Sprint network without paying Sprint prices. The prepaid brand offers smartphone plans with unlimited talk and text going from $35 (1GB of data) to $55 (10GB). Starting on February 3rd, it will offer any customer that enrolls in Auto Re-Boost 2.5GB for the price of 1.

For comparison, T-Mobile provides 2GB of data for $45 with its Simple Starter Plan.

When a cell phone carrier wants you to sign a two-year contract or tries to sell you a phone for cheap on a financing plan, there's usually an asterisk at the end of the offer. To take part, you need to have good credit, which is typically defined by a third-party bureau. Building credit takes a long time, and it's easy to ruin, leaving large numbers of Americans with less than stellar scores.

Imagine the horror: one minute, you think you're finally getting Lollipop on your phone, the next your phone is soft bricked. That's the reality for owners of the 2014 Moto X on Canada's WIND Mobile, according to a flurry of reports on Reddit and elsewhere. At this point, the only surefire recourse seems to be bringing the phone to WIND to get it sent away for repair.

Update: Plenty of readers are saying that they've received 5.0.1 with AT&T SIM cards. The decision to publish this post was made after my testing and another AP team member saying that he had yet to receive 5.0.1 on his device as well. It's possible that the rollout to devices with AT&T SIMs is just moving at a much slower pace than for ones with other SIMs, but regardless, there is still something unique going on with AT&T.

The Galaxy Alpha is a slick piece of hardware. While the bulk of the phone remains plastic, Samsung decided to surround this handset with a metal frame, giving it a more premium look and feel than the flagship that came before it, the Galaxy S5. Now AT&T is gracing the phone with a minor over-the-air update that provides unnamed "user experience enhancements." The OTA will leave the device running software version G850AUCU1ANL1.

Today MetroPCS, a prepaid service offered by T-Mobile, has rolled out a limited-time discounted price for its unlimited 4G LTE plan. Anyone who signs up between now and April 5th can get set up for $50 a month, a $10 savings off the usual price. There's no pre-planned end date, so you can then take advantage of the lower price for quite a while.

For comparison, T-Mobile offers unlimited data on the same network for $80 a month.

The original Moto X was a breath of fresh air when it debuted in 2013, but Verizon didn't want any part of Motorola's relatively open stance when it came to unlockable bootloaders and customization (as usual). To alleviate this for users who wanted an easy path to root, software backups, and custom ROMs, Motorola offered the Moto X Developer Edition, a full-priced 32GB phone that users could unlock by requesting a code.

AT&T customers with a regular need to dial numbers in Mexico are about to save some money. The wireless carrier announced today unlimited calling to our southern neighbor, available to anyone who adds the World Connect Value package to their postpaid plan. Folks who already have the $5 add-on will receive the benefit automatically.

It's easy to forget, but T-Mobile USA is still owned by German firm Deutsche Telekom. In a recent speech given at the DLD conference in Munich, Germany, DT CEO Tim Höttges said that T-Mobile's un-carrier promotions won't be enough to keep T-Mobile going. The only long-term solution, apparently, is a merger.